Second Guessing God.

This is a follow up from Gina’s post the other day. It’s got me thinking all clichés aside what would Jesus do.

In his book Second Guessing God, Brian Jones tells a story of a homeless man he came across. It is powerful. I just read the excerpt on amazon.com and am ordering it right now.

Here is the story.

“When I think of broken people, I think of a homeless man who approached me for money on High Street next to the campus of the Ohio State University. Just eighteen, I had heard somewhere that you should never give homeless people money because they might buy alcohol with it. So I said, “how about I buy you something?”” The man agreed. We walked to a deli where I bought him a sandwich, a bag of chips, and a soda. When we sat down , I grabbed his hand and said , “Let’s pray.”

When I finished, I looked up and was surprised to see tears streaming down his face. “how did you end up on the streets?” I blurted out. He rattled off the details like bullet points on a resume: “Successful job; come home from work early one day and caught wife in bed with another man; started drinking; liquor consumed me; lost job; eventually lost house; here I am two years later on the street.” I could feel my chest tighten as tears streamed down his face.

I will close this post (being a children’s pastor) with a quote from Dr. Seuss.